Buried at the church where Patrick Henry made his "liberty or death" speech

Early years

George Wythe (pronounced "with") was born in 1726 at Chesterville
in what is now Hampton, Virginia. His father was Thomas Wythe, a planter who
died soon after George's birth. Wythe was reared by his mother, Margaret Walker
Wythe, and probably received his early education from her. Margaret Wythe instilled
in her son a love of learning that served him all his life. Even as an old man,
Wythe took up new subjects, teaching himself Hebrew, for example. George Wythe
read law with his uncle Stephen Dewey, who lived near Petersburg.

Admitted to the colony's General Court bar in 1746, Wythe first practiced in
Elizabeth City County and later with the prominent lawyer Zachary Lewis. In
1747, Wythe married Zachary's daughter Ann. Wythe was admitted to the York County
bar January 16, 1748; his wife Ann died August 8 the same year. The young widower
was appointed clerk to the Committee of Privileges and Elections of the House
of Burgesses in October.

George Wythe house

Highly respected by fellow Virginians

George Wythe's signature is first among the Virginia signatures on the Declaration
of Independence. He was so highly respected by his fellow Virginians that the
other delegates left a space so that his signature would appear first, as he
was absent from the meeting the day they signed the document.

"No man ever left behind him a character more venerated than George Wythe,"
Thomas Jefferson wrote. "His virtue was of the purest tint; his integrity
inflexible, and his justice exact; of warm patriotism, and, devoted as he was
to liberty, and the natural and equal rights of man, he might truly be called
the Cato of his country."

Jefferson learned the law from Wythe, and, in a manner of speaking, Wythe's
signature on the Declaration was a teacher's endorsement of his pupil's finest
brief. Among Wythe's other law pupils were John Marshall, perhaps the greatest
chief justice of the United States, and St. George Tucker. When Wythe was Virginia's
chancellor, Henry Clay was his assistant.

Life of significant achievement

If Wythe had accomplished nothing more than signing the Declaration of Independence
and teaching Thomas Jefferson, he would have earned a place in history --but his life was crowded with achievement! He was Virginia's foremost
classical scholar, dean of its lawyers, a Williamsburg alderman and mayor, a
member of the House of Burgesses, and house clerk. He was the colony's attorney
general, a delegate to the Continental Congress, speaker of the state assembly,
the nation's first college law professor, Virginia's chancellor, and a framer
of the federal Constitution.

Served in the House of Burgesses

Wythe was elected a burgess for Williamsburg in 1754, and soon he married Elizabeth
Taliaferro (pronounced "Tolliver"). She was the daughter of planter
and builder Richard Taliaferro, who built what is now called "the George
Wythe House" about 1755, and also made substantial repairs and additions
to the Governor's Palace about 1752. Taliaferro gave his daughter and her husband
life rights to the house.

The House of Burgesses sent Attorney General Peyton Randolph to England as
its agent in 1753. George Wythe succeeded Randolph as attorney general but resigned
the office in Randolph's favor after Randolph returned in 1755. Wythe remained
a Williamsburg burgess until 1758, when he was elected burgess for the College
of William and Mary. He represented the college until 1761, when he was elected
for Elizabeth City County.

Early supporter of revolution

An early opponent of the Stamp Act, Wythe was appointed to the Committee of
Petition and Remonstrance in 1764 and drafted the remonstrance to the House
of Commons that protested against the tax. Nevertheless, Wythe, like Peyton
Randolph and others, opposed freshman burgess Patrick Henry's stormy resolves
against the act the next year, regarding the resolves as redundant and ill timed.

Association with Jefferson and the college

Thomas Jefferson met George Wythe during Governor Fauquier's administration.
They were introduced by Professor William Small of the College of William and
Mary. Wythe in turn introduced Jefferson to Fauquier, who invited the young
man to play his violin in a Palace amateur quartet. Small, Wythe, Fauquier,
and Jefferson often made a party of four at Palace dinners, where science, politics,
and morals became regular topics of conversation.

Wythe was appointed to William and Mary's board in 1768 and was elected Williamsburg's
mayor December 1 of that year. He became a vestryman of Bruton Parish Church
in 1760. He was appointed clerk of the House of Burgesses July 16, 1767 and took the oath of office on March 31, 1768. When
the burgesses ordered the Public Hospital built in 1770, Wythe was named one
of its trustees. He remained house clerk until 1775, when he was elected a delegate
to the Second Continental Congress.

Following instructions from the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg, Richard
Henry Lee, another member of the Virginia delegation, rose at the Second Continental
Congress and moved for American independence. Jefferson's declaration was approved
July 4, but the document was not engrossed and ready for signing until August
2. By that time, Wythe had returned to Williamsburg, thus he and the other absent
delegates signed later. Below Wythe's name appear the signatures, in order,
of: Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson Jr.,
Francis Lightfoot Lee, and Carter Braxton.

Designed seal of Virginia

Though 50 years old, Wythe proposed to fight in the Revolution, but his true
service remained in government. He worked on the drafting of the first Virginia
constitution, written mostly by George Mason. Wythe served with Jefferson, Mason,
Thomas Ludwell Lee, and Edmund Pendleton on the committee that revised Virginia's
laws. George Wythe was one of two members of the committee who designed the
seal of Virginia. Virtue, sword in hand, stands with her foot on the prostrate
form of Tyranny, whose crown lies nearby. The motto, "Sic Semper Tyrannis,"
may be translated "Thus Ever to Tyrants."

First professor of law in America

In 1777, Wythe was elected speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates. Two
years later, he accepted appointment as professor of law and police in now-Governor
Jefferson's reorganization of the College of William and Mary. It was the first
such professorship in the nation. After the government moved to Richmond in
1780, Wythe taught classes, presided over moot courts, and conducted mock legislatures
in the old Capitol.

Wythe accepted law students as boarders in his home and treated them as if
they were the sons he never had. His kindness was returned by admiring pupils
like Jefferson, who called him "my faithful and beloved Mentor in youth,
and my most affectionate friend through life."

Late in the1780s, student William Munford preserved a glimpse of Wythe's domestic
establishment. "Old as he is," Munford wrote, "his habit is,
every morning, winter and summer, to rise before the sun, go to the well in
the yard, draw several buckets of water, and fill the reservoir for his shower
bath, and then, drawing the cord, let the water fall over him in a glorious
shower. Many a time have I heard him catching his breath and almost shouting
with the shock. When he entered the breakfast room his face would be in a glow,
and all his nerves were fully braced."

In a dispute with the administration, Wythe resigned from the college in 1789
and accepted an appointment as judge of Virginia's Court of Chancery in Richmond.
He moved there in 1791, turning his home over to Taliaferro's heir. The Reverend
James Madison, president of the College of William and Mary, bought the house
in 1792 following the death of the Taliaferro heir.

Chancellor Wythe seized the opportunity of one of his cases to try to cripple
the institution of slavery. He ruled that Virginia's Declaration of Rights --
written by Mason and adopted in 1776 -- included African Americans
among the "all men" born free and equally independent. "They
should," Wythe said, "be considered free until proven otherwise."
His ruling did not survive appeals.

Library of Congress

George Wythe’s will of 1806 leaving law books to Thomas Jefferson

Murdered by an heir

Elizabeth Taliaferro Wythe died in 1787. Long a foe of slavery, George Wythe
freed several slaves, including Lydia Broadnax, who chose to remain in Wythe's
service. He conveyed other slaves to Elizabeth's Taliaferro relatives. Near
the end of his life, Wythe wrote his will in favor of a grandnephew, George
Wythe Sweeney, but also gave generous bequests to his former slaves Michael Brown
and Lydia Broadnax. A ne'er-do-well, Sweeney forged checks against Wythe's accounts
to cover pressing debts. Hoping to avoid detection and inherit his great uncle's
entire estate, he resorted to murder. Strawberries or coffee seem to have been
the vehicle by which Sweeney poisoned both his great uncle and Michael Brown,
who died within days. Wythe endured two weeks of agony, but as he lay dying,
Sweeney's forgeries were discovered, and Wythe revised his will.

A grand jury indicted Sweeney for murder, but Sweeney went free because a jury concluded the only-circumstantial evidence against him was too weak to support a conviction. No witness was able to testify to seeing Sweeney poison either the household's food or drink. Cook Lydia Broadnax was thought to have been in the kitchen when, apparently, Wythe's breakfast coffee was poisoned, and may have seen Sweeney throw evidence in the fire, but neither she nor any African American was allowed to testify against a white person in court.

Wythe is buried at St. John's Church in Richmond, the church in which Patrick
Henry made his "Liberty or Death" speech.